


Hero

by msred



Series: Starting Over [36]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Marriage, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28008450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: I’d cringed, a month or so earlier, when Brody had come home and told me his school was having a ‘ceremony’ for all the fifth graders at the end of the school year.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 22
Kudos: 27





	Hero

_9 years, 4 months together; 7 years, 11 months married; 4 years, 9 months post-adoption (May, Year 11)_

“Just a hint? Please?” I pleaded, watching Brody’s face through the rearview mirror. “Just tell me if it’s a painting or a drawing. Or tell me which theme you’re doing?”

“Mom,” he groaned, rolling his eyes almost all the way back into his head.

“Babe, you gotta stop,” Chris admonished from the passenger seat, smirking at my frustration.

“Oh come on, you mean you’re not curious?” I saw a look pass between the two of them, Chris turning just slightly to look back at Brody over his shoulder, but before I could call either of them out on it he was facing forward again and answering.

“Your son wants to surprise you, let him surprise you.”

And okay, when he put it that way, it made me feel kind of bad. “Fine,” I said quietly, “I’ll be good and wait my turn like everyone else.” I saw Brody deflate a little in the back seat, his shoulders falling away from his ears and his chest rising and falling on a silent sigh, and Chris reached for my hand on the console, lifting it to press his lips to my knuckles.

“That’s my girl.”

I’d cringed, a month or so earlier, when Brody had come home and told me his school was having a ‘ceremony’ for all the fifth graders at the end of the school year. I was a big believer that some milestones and rites of passage, such as ‘graduations,’ were becoming far overused and taking away from the uniqueness and specialness of real, big moments when they came. (Don’t even get me started on ‘prom-posals.’) I loved my son and was more proud of him than I could begin to express, but I didn’t want him to have a fifth grade graduation. My misgivings had been significantly lessened when his teacher, Miss Ireland, had sent home an official letter about the event, in which she called it an ‘Instructional Showcase.’ The plan was for every fifth grade student to showcase something they had done throughout the year that they were particularly proud of, a product from any of the thematic units they’d done over the course of the year. It was hard for me to have a problem with that, even if I did still worry a little bit that it would turn into more of a spectacle than I was strictly comfortable with. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t about me, it was about Brody and his classmates, and I was determined that even if I ended up not loving whatever exactly the whole thing turned out to be, I’d never let him know that.

As time had gone on, though, and the project that Brody planned to present got more and more shrouded in secrecy, I couldn’t help but get excited. I was sure it was going to be a piece of artwork of some kind. That was his passion, and he was good at it, really good. He was also really good at being able to take any instructions or parameters Miss Ireland gave him as far as what learning or growth he was supposed to be displaying and making something beautiful out of it. Even I had been skeptical, at the end of the first unit, when he’d told me that he planned to do a colored pencil drawing to display everything he’d learned over the course of the unit, all around the theme of ‘Community’ (it felt a little bit like a cop-out at first, like, “I’ll just draw a picture of a community and call it a day,”) but we’d sat down at the kitchen table with the overall unit outlines and pacing guide Miss Ireland had sent home at the beginning of the year, and when he explained his plans for the drawing and the brief explanation he would write to go with it, he hit every standard and then some. That was the last time I second-guessed him; it was clear that both he and his teacher knew what they were doing and I wasn’t about to interfere.

So, with that in mind, I was nearly positive that Brody was going to share a piece of artwork of some kind, one he hadn’t done at home, apparently, or there would be no need for all the secrecy. But I had no idea exactly what it was going to be, or even which of the six thematic units from the year he’d chosen to present from. I was nearly positive that my mother-in-law and older sister-in-law not only knew what he’d done but had been a part of the whole thing, and there were moments, like the one that had just passed in the car, that I suspected that Chris was in on the plan too, though I couldn’t be certain of that part. Regardless of who all knew what and who had helped in what way, I was still completely in the dark, something which my son seemed very relieved by and that my husband seemed to be enjoying far too much, relishing in my frustration at being left in the dark, playing ‘dear devoted dad and husband’ when we were around Brody and teasing me relentlessly when we weren’t.

I managed not to ask again for the rest of our drive to the school, changing the subject to the movie that Chris was about to start directing over the summer. Chris was excited to get back behind the camera, I was excited for him because of how good the script was, and Brody was over the moon because we’d made plans for the two of us to join Chris down in Savannah for a couple weeks of the filming, and the cast included a young actor from a streaming show Brody had watched the first season of and loved. It was a good way to keep my mind off wanting to know what was in store once we got to the school, or at least to keep the two of them talking so that they didn’t realize that I was still obsessing, just a little bit. 

As soon as we were in the school, not two steps into the front lobby, Brody was taking off, barely calling back, “I’ll see you guys later, I have to go check in with Miss Ireland,” before he was out of sight.

My jaw dropped and I scoffed as I watched him go, and once he’d disappeared fully I turned to Chris. “Hey, remember when we had a sweet little boy who loved us? What happened to him?”

“Oh stop,” he rolled his eyes and dropped an arm over my shoulders to pull me into him, laying his other arm across the first so that he held me to him, my face pressed to his chest as I wound my arms around his waist. “He’s just nervous. This is his first time on a stage, you know.”

“Are you saying _your_ son has stage fright?” I asked, my voice muffled in his shirt.

“Hey now, don’t get crazy,” he pinched my shoulder. “I just think this is important to him, he doesn’t want to mess it up.” 

“He’s going to present a painting, or a drawing, the hard part is already done. He’s always super comfortable talking about his art, and Miss Ireland has told me a few times that he’s a great public speaker in class. I don’t think he has anything to be nervous about.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions there, Missy.”

When I looked up at him Chris was looking back down at me, one eyebrow raised high on his head. He definitely knew something I didn’t, I decided right then. I’d been suspicious for a while, but the way he acted then, the way he looked at me, the way he _smirked_ at me, proved it. I was considering whether to call him on it or just let it go, since we were so close to the big reveal anyway, but before I had a chance to make a decision, Valerie was sidling up to us.

“Hey Evanses.”

Chris let me go so I could hug her, him doing the same once I had finished. “Hey you,” I greeted as she stepped back from him, “where’s James?”

“Oh, he’s already in the auditorium, sitting with the rest of your crew.”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Of course they beat us here. All of them?”

“Yep,” she grinned, “we’re basically a whole row. Oh, and by the way, James has basically declared himself an honorary Evans at this point. Looks like you have a new brother,” she teased nudging Chris’s arm with her elbow.

“Hey,” he shrugged, holding out one hand palm-up as he snaked the other arm around my waist and curled his hand over my hip, “the more the merrier. That’s always been the Evans motto.”

“Be careful what you wish for, you’ll never get rid of us.”

Valerie’s son, Austin, had been Brody’s best friend since before we’d even started fostering him. They were in the same kindergarten class and on Brody’s first day, when his previous foster parents had sent him to school with a lunch of a candy bar and a bag of chips, Austin had plopped down next to him at the lunch table and, without hesitation, torn his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in half and dumped his bags of carrot sticks and grapes and split both, one-for-one. They’d also shared Brody’s candy bar, of course, because they were six-year-old boys. From that day on, they’d been basically inseparable, along with a little girl, Olivia, who had been a part of their little crew until her family had moved away the previous year. The closeness between the boys had led to a natural friendship between his parents and us as well, with Valerie easily being my best friend in Massachusetts, not counting Chris’s sisters. And that had led to them being in attendance at more than one Evans family event. It was no surprise at all that Valerie and James had already found seats with Chris’s mom and sisters (and the brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews that came along as part of that package) even before we got there.

“Is Austin in there too?” I asked.

“Girl no,” she scoffed, “he took off the second we got through the door.” 

Chris squeezed my hip and I refused to look up at him, knowing the cocky smirk I’d find if I did. He probably found it hilarious that Austin had done the exact same thing I’d whined about Brody doing. Instead I carried on talking to Valerie as if I couldn’t practically _feel_ how smug he was next to me. “Brody did the same thing. He said something about checking in with Miss Ireland.”

“Yeah, I actually didn’t see any of the kids from their class in the auditorium, so maybe she’s got them doing some last minute presentation rehearsals or something. I’m just glad Austin is one of the first to present, he’d be losing his mind with nerves if he was in Brody’s place.”

My brow furrowed involuntarily and I cocked my head a little to one side. “What do you mean?”

“Oh,” Valerie’s eyes darted around the space until finally landing somewhere just over my shoulder, “just a second.” We watched her nearly jog over to a nearby table to pick up a couple folded sheets of paper from a stack there and bring them back. “Here, have a program.” She presented one to each of us with a flourish.

Chris’s eyes darted down to his quickly as he opened it, and something in him seemed to relax once he saw the inside. I watched him for a second, but the program seemed to have his full attention, so I followed suit and opened my own. The front had been a pretty standard program cover, the name of the event and some appropriate clip art, and the two interior pages listed the names of all the students in Brody’s class in the order of their presentations, arranged, as far as I could tell, by theme, but in no particular order otherwise. I skimmed the list of names until I finally found Brody’s under the “Heroes” theme, the very last presenter of the night. “Huh.”

“What?” Valerie asked.

“No, nothing. I’m just surprised he’s doing that theme, that’s all.” When he’d been younger, the fact that his dad was _Captain America_ had been exactly as exciting for Brody as you’d expect. It had been the thing that had drawn him in on that first day, made him feel comfortable with Chris, and it had been a huge source of pride for him those first few years. Over the previous year, year and a half or so, though, he’d gotten a little more sensitive about it. He never took it out on Chris, and it was clear he was still very proud of his dad and what he did and what he meant to people, but he was getting to a point where he wanted to be more than _Captain America’s son_ . (He’d also started to recognize, I thought, that Chris himself had been trying to put the character behind him, in a way, for a while. And much like Chris wanted to be _Chris Evans_ and not _Steve Rogers_ , Brody wanted to be _Chris’s son_ , not _Cap’s son._ ) I was afraid, at first, that the change of heart would bother Chris, hurt his feelings or his pride, but honestly, he was proud of Brody for wanting to step into his own light; we both were. And once Brody had started showing more of his own interests, they’d actually gotten closer, if anything, Chris taking a deep interest in learning about the things Brody enjoyed and sharing the things with him that weren’t necessarily such a big part of his public persona.

I looked up at Chris again. “Did you know he was doing a ‘Heroes’ project?”

“Babe,” his voice was quiet, gentle, but warning. 

I shrunk into myself a little, sheepish. “Right. Waiting to be surprised.” He folded the program and slipped it into his back pocket before wrapping his arm back around my waist and pulling me close to press his lips to my head. “Okay,” I sighed, “should we go sit?” Chris shrugged and Valerie smiled and nodded. “Lead the way,” I told her.

We followed Valerie to where, sure enough, her husband and the whole Evans clan were seated, the row full aside from one empty seat on one end next to James and two seats on the other end, presumably for Chris and me, next to his younger sister. In fact, his two nephews were actually sitting in the row in front of the rest of the family, that’s how much space our crew took up. By the time we’d said our hellos and shared hugs with the people we could reach without climbing across everyone else, we were sitting in our seats, Chris on the aisle and me between him and his sister, and Miss Ireland was taking the stage. 

We sat patiently, respectfully, through all of the presentations, though it was hard to get too invested in any of them besides Austin’s diorama of a community with its accompanying “virtual tour” slideshow. (Actually, I could have gotten very invested very quickly, but Chris was always reminding me that I was not the teacher for Brody’s class and that it wasn’t my place to evaluate their work, and also that my standards and expectations weren’t appropriate for fifth graders, so I made it a point to stay detached.) By the time we got to the first presenter in Brody’s group, though, my patience was wearing thin. I would never be disrespectful to a child presenting something they had worked hard on and were proud of, of course, but I was squirming in my seat and tapping my fingers on my knee to the point that Chris reached over the armrest between us and grabbed my hand.

 _Finally_ , I thought to myself, exhaling slowly, as we clapped for the little girl who presented before Brody and Miss Ireland took the stage to introduce him. She carried with her just a music stand, not the easel that I expected to see. As she talked, I could see my mother-in-law out of the corner of my eye, pulling up the camera on her phone and passing it forward to her oldest grandson to record Brody’s presentation.

Miss Ireland smiled as she finished, lowering the microphone she’d been speaking into to just above the height of the music stand and stepping aside to make room for my little boy. He could tease me all he wanted to about being impatient or nervous, but when Brody started to walk onto the stage, Chris shifted in his seat, leaning forward and bringing both elbows to the armrests on either side of him and lifting his hands, mine still trapped in one of them, to just in front of his mouth. He was just as excited as I was, he was just better at hiding it.

We watched Brody step up to the microphone and set a piece of paper gingerly on the music stand, turning away from the mic to thank his teacher (and making my heart swell with pride in the process) before turning forward again and clearing his throat lightly.

“Umm, hi,” his sweet voice came over the speaker system and he held up one hand in a wave. “So, I’m Brody Evans, if you didn’t know. Umm, for my showcase today I’m going to read my essay ‘My Personal Hero.’” He went quiet and looked out over the crowd like he was making sure everyone was listening, then his eyes landed on mine and he smiled softly as I worked to school my features so that he didn't see my shock. “Okay, so here goes.” He looked down at the paper on the music stand, smoothing his hands over it carefully once before clearing his throat again and taking another half-step closer to the microphone.

_“My dad is pretty much everyone’s hero. He’s big, strong, smart, funny, he played an actual superhero in the movies for about 10 years, and apparently he’s pretty good looking.”_

Everyone in the auditorium laughed and I leaned toward Chris to bump his shoulder with mine. He rolled his eyes, but the smile never left his face.

_“He’s also a really, really good dad. But if I had to pick just one person in the whole world to be my hero, and Miss Ireland said that I did, it wouldn’t be my dad. It would be my mom.”_

Chris squeezed my hand and turned it so that he could press his lips to the back of it. I gasped, just a little, so quietly that no one besides Chris or Shanna could possibly have heard me. _  
__“My dad grew up around here, with plenty of money and resources and a really great family who supported him and helped him a lot. He says that’s called ‘privilege.’ My mom has some privilege too, because she’s white,”_

Brody looked up from the paper he’d been reading his essay from and changed the tone of his voice just slightly to say, “My parents talk about privilege kind of a lot,” prompting another round of laughter from the crowd. We’d never tried to pretend that our family was anything other than exactly what it was, and by that point, the basics of Brody’s story were well-known within our community and his school so that it wasn’t a secret that he was adopted (and it was obvious from looking at him that he wasn’t white, not completely, anyway). “Anyway, sorry, back to the essay.” He glanced back down, his eyes skimming over the words on the page before coming back up to his audience.

_“My mom has some privilege too, because she’s white, but she didn’t really have any of those other things that my dad had._

_“My mom had a family who wasn’t usually very nice to her, so she grew up to be a teacher so she could help and support kids who have families like hers, or who just need an extra person in their life to love them. She goes to their plays and their concerts and their sports and she always tells them how great they are and how proud she is of them. And as a teacher she also helps kids who don’t have a lot of money or resources. She helps them get into college and get money for college so they can have chances that they might not have had without her help. But even though she does all that, and she calls all these kids that she teaches “her kids,” and some of them even call her mom sometimes, she’s still the best mom I could ever ask for. She always makes time to do all those same things for me, plus more, even though she’s busy, and she says all the time that me and my dad are the most important things in her world. And I believe her. Basically, she just makes me feel really special and loved, no matter what she has going on.”_

Brody’s eyes shifted from what I knew was a point just above the audience’s heads, something he’d been taught early by his Nana, to meet mine and I blinked several times in quick succession, trying to keep him from seeing the tears that had started to swim there. He gave me a brief smile, then went on.

_“When my mom was younger, a long time before she and my dad knew each other, my mom was in love with someone else and they were married. But then he died fighting in a war, and my mom was really sad for a really long time. That’s when she met my dad. And at first she was really scared, because of how sad she was, but even though she was so sad and so scared, my dad could also tell she was really special. So he became her friend and then he followed her around like a lost puppy until she was less sad and not scared anymore. Or at least,”_

He looked up again from the written copy of his speech and shrugged.

_“that’s what my Nana says.”_

Another round of laughter and Chris grumbling _Thanks, Ma_ in my ear, but even as he did, he lowered my hand gently to the armrest and let it go to wrap his arm around my shoulders and pull me as close as possible.

_“Anyway, when I was younger, not too long after I started living with my mom and dad, someone that I loved, my first mom, died, and it made me really sad, and really scared, so I think I understand kind of how my mom felt back then. But I had her, and my dad, and even my Nana and the rest of my family, and they all really helped me through it, especially my mom. But when my mom’s first husband died, she didn’t really have anyone, until my dad came along anyway, so she had to be sad and scared all alone. I just really think it’s pretty amazing that she went through all that alone and she was still so nice and caring that my dad could see how special she was even through all the sadness and fear.”_

My breath stuttered as I pulled in a long inhale, and Chris dropped his lips to my ear to ask if I was okay. I nodded and turned my attention away from the stage and onto him just long enough to give him a quick, watery smile and for him to kiss my forehead, then I was turning back to the front, my full attention back on our boy.

_“Both of my parents are really awesome people, but when I think about all the things my mom has had to go through and how hard she works to make sure that everyone else around her has things better than she did, especially me, I just think she’s the perfect example of a hero. Heroes are people who everyone can look up to and who help or save people. If everyone looked up to my mom and was more like her, I think the world would be a lot nicer and happier. And I’m pretty sure she saved me.”_

Brody was quiet for a moment, looking down at the paper in front of him, then he stepped back again from the music stand and nodded once. The applause after he did was louder than for any other child, if only because of the sheer number of Evanses in the audience. I couldn’t actually manage clapping, because tears had started to slide down my cheeks and Chris had managed to somehow pull me even closer, the armrest still between us, and I fisted my hands in his polo shirt and pressed my face, damp cheeks and all, into his neck. “You’re okay, sweet girl,” he whispered, “you can cry on me all you want to when we’re alone, but I’m not sure Brody knows the difference between your happy tears and your sad ones, and he needs to see you happy right now.” I nodded. He was right. I pulled back, sniffling, and Chris used his thumbs to wipe the tears from my cheeks. “There you go, that’s my girl.”

I turned toward the stage and sent Brody a wide, genuine smile before blowing him a kiss. He smiled back then stepped back up to the microphone. “Thank you for letting me share my essay with you. And thank you to my dad for helping me write it, and to my Aunt Carly for fixing some of my dad’s mistakes.” Shanna reached behind me to pinch Chris’s side and he just rolled his eyes. “My mom usually helps me with my writing homework, since that’s what she teaches, but you can probably guess why I didn’t want her help with this one, and I really wanted it to be good. For her.” He stepped back and gave a little nod again then looked around the stage for his teacher.

Miss Ireland came back to the stage and called all of Brody’s classmates back up from the front row to join them. She had all the kids take a bow, twice, then thanked us all for coming and told us how much she was going to miss our kids once they were no longer her fifth graders in a week and had moved on to be “big middle schoolers.” Some parents probably thought she was just placating or being disingenuous, trying to keep everyone happy and say the things the parents wanted to hear, but as a teacher myself, I knew better. Miss Ireland was a good teacher, a sincere teacher, and I knew that, like me, she truly cared about her kids. Brody was going to miss her, and I was going to miss him having her. 

She reminded us of a few end-of-year housekeeping things - locker clean-outs, cafeteria balances, their end-of-year class party, things like that - then released the kids from the stage back to their parents. Brody made a beeline for us, slowing significantly once he was a couple rows away. Chris met him beside the row just in front of us, his palm out for a high five. Brody slapped his hand then Chris curled his hands over opposite shoulders and pulled Brody against him. “You did good, Bud,” he told him, cupping a large hand around the back of Brody’s head, his thumb drifting over his dark hair just behind his ear. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, dad,” Brody said before pulling back and looking over at me. He blinked up at me a couple times and it took everything in me not to burst into tears again. “How was it?” 

“Oh, baby,” I laughed and stepped forward and combed the fingers of my right hand through his hair, brushing it back off his forehead and continuing down and back over his ear before finally curling my hand under his chin and tilting his face up more squarely toward me, “it was _perfect_.”

He rolled his eyes, but his smile was unmistakable. “You said there’s no such thing as perfect writing, it can always be improved.”

“That,” I squeezed a little, my thumb and middle finger pressing into his cheeks and causing his lips to pucker slightly, “was perfect.” He pressed his face between my ribs and wrapped his arms around my waist in a hug, and I returned the gesture and bent to press my lips to the crown of his head. “You’re my hero too, you know,” I said into his hair, loud enough for only him to hear. He squeezed me tighter before stepping back. He smiled up at me and I winked, then nodded for him to go say hi to the rest of the family.

As he walked away, already being fawned over by his Nana and his aunts, Chris stepped behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder. “I think we’re doing okay with this whole ‘mom and dad’ thing,” he said quietly, his chest vibrating lightly against my back.

I let my head fall to the side until my temple rested against his. “We’ve got a really incredible kid,” I answered.

He nodded. “We do. And you deserve a lot of the credit for that.”

“And so do you.” 

He kissed my cheek a little sloppily, not seeming to care that we were in an auditorium full of fifth graders and their parents. If anything, he probably thought it was funny. “So, are we forgiven for all the secret-keeping?”

I bit my lip to keep him from seeing my smile. “I guess I can let it slide this time.” We both knew, even as I said it, that I’d happily let the two of them go on surprising me for the rest of my life, even if I did complain. In fact, I was counting on it.


End file.
